[We sat down recently with Jamie, Bo, and J-Raff of the Wonderful Spells at their rehearsal space in Allston to talk about smarmulence, the visual element of music, and why Nick Stumpf is an asshole. Not so much an interview as a somewhat rambling conversation, we’ve picked out some of the highlights and we’ll be presenting them here in a couple parts]
melophobe: So this is a part of Allston that I didn’t know existed.
Jamie: A lot of people don’t. It’s nice, like when we were having parties, there were some of them that were really good.
Bo: And like no one ever, you know, they never get busted because no one fucking comes around here.
Jamie: Down there is sort of a rougher area too [gestures towards upper Allston]. That was one of the problems with having parties in here, is that people would go out the back door and there’s like a playground there and, you know, creepers.
Bo: Creepers and gangsters and shit. The last party we had was many months ago in October and it was totally cool. We didn’t even play at it. It was actually just a party. Usually we play or we have other bands play.
Jamie: We did play, yes we did.
Bo: Oh, really?
Jamie: We played in there and we had in the back wall there, we had …the room was a bit different then. This is mostly…
Bo: No one else played though, that’s the thing
Jamie: No, no one else played. We had couches for us to sit up here and then the back was… I set up a screen printing table and I brought my two turn tables to use and our mixing monitors and I had….you know Golden Stash? The public art everywhere? Golden Stash was DJing. I was DJing just for the hell of it. Then, he came over and started spinning records. Actually he brought over a crate and said he’d brought the Golden Stash of hits. I talked to him earlier that day. And then, I guess, down at the Common Grounds on Saturday nights they have that Cheap Thrills a Go Go… the DJs from there came and spun records here until 4 in the morning. One of them was some touring DJ from New York.
Bo: You know what the funny thing is, it was the sickest party ever and…earlier that night, we didn’t even plan to have a party …
Jamie: Oh, that’s right; we didn’t call anyone until …
Bo: I didn’t think we were going to have the party, really. Then we decided to and like, alright, we should get another band to play because …so we called all these bands and none of them could do it because they were like ‘oh dude, it’s too late notice’. And we’re like, whatever, and it turned out to be the sickest party ever. It was so cool.
Jamie: That’s part of the problem, too, the more we’ve had, the bigger the reputation has gotten, and...I guess the worst thing would be like all the thrasher people come and they want to puke and break stuff.
Bo: We don’t like the punks to come and puke on our floors.
melophobe: The fact that it’s going to be a recording studio - does that mean the end of parties here?
Bo: For now, yes.
Jamie: That’s the other problem. This building was the Pan9 Building, the Multimedia Arts Venue, and it burned in a fire. When that burned down, this building was pretty much empty for a while and the problem with the parties is that people go down the hallway and they’re vandalizing and now there’s residents in the building.
Bo: Yeah, people started to move back in. There are actually more people getting pissed off now. For a while, it was cool, like at 5 in the morning when everyone would leave, you’d have to go out with a bucket of paint and paint over all the graffiti that all the people put up and clean up glass in the bathroom and shit.
melophobe: It’s not like the traditional party clean up, wipe up a few spills?
Bo: Yeah, but it’s like a concrete building so…
Jamie: And we make 50 dollars on the redemption run...which is conveniently right there [gestures to the corner]. I mean, not there, but that block is where the redemption center is.
Bo: It’s cool that you guys are here, because we have a cool little hide out here and it’s really neat because no one knows.
Jamie: We are actually using this space. I’m designing a web site for us and this whole…all of our rooms here are the basis for the website, which is photography based. My friend Tess is a really great photographer. She’s doing it all on like medium format film.
melophobe: So how did you get into doing all the art work for the band?
Jamie: Like making art?
melophobe: Yeah, I mean, did you go to school or anything?
Jamie: I go to Mass Art, but I go to Mass Art because I’ve been making art for my whole life, I guess. It’s funny, for the band, people go, ‘what kind of art do you make?’ And I guess I don’t really make… I don’t really make paintings very often. I don’t really have time for that.
(Bo gestures to a painting on the wall)
Yeah, I painted that. This is our keyboard, the hit maker. It died for a while. That’s why I memorialized it in this portrait. (laughs) But now it works. Now it’s back. Yeah, Nick, who just left the band actually, fixed it. This is the hit maker. This painting right here. I don’t even have to try, I just turn it on. The thing is, we feel real strongly about the visual element of our music because it’s inescapable. I think about the example I always use - If there’s a record or CD that you really like and the CD is purple, it’s a subconscious association that you’re going to listen to those songs and it’s there. That color you’re going to put it into your boombox, or your car stereo, and that subconscious association of the color will blanket your experience, even subconsciously, you know? Think about Abbey Road, I think about the cover and those colors when I listen to those songs. Every band…you can’t have a band without seeing the band themselves, the way they look or the way their website looks, or an album. The visual element is totally inescapable. It’s something that a lot of bands either don’t take seriously enough, or don’t capitalize on.
Bo: I hate when bands don’t do their art. Bands that just have some fucking shitty computer generated cover of a man-hole that says their name - some stupid shit. Like steam coming out and ...I hate that.
melophobe: Do you think a lot of bands kind of gave up a little with the small CD format instead of the LP?
Bo: Yeah, totally.
Jamie: That’s pretty much our goal there. That’s like number one on the list of things is get pressed on vinyl. I can’t wait until that day, just to get it back. I just want to rip it open and smell it.
Bo: The thing about the art too is that it’s just so much fun. It makes it so much more fun. I don’t make art, Jamie does, but it’s just as much fun for me because I love when Jamie makes… let me show you this one flyer. You see that one right there? [points to a flyer on the door]. The weird pimply person with the glasses?
melophobe: The one with the French Kicks?
Bo: Me and J-Raff were in the pizza shop and this fat chick came in and was like, ‘do you have any cheeseburger subs?’ And we told Jamie this story and he drew a picture of what he thought she probably looked like. To color in her face he found an actual picture of acne from the internet and covered her face with acne. Then, we got it printed in color and I was thinking to myself, we’re going to post these up in public, right? People are going to be walking down the street and see this fucking hideous, grotesque, freaked out, pimple beast woman. They’re going to be like, ‘who is this band?’ They’re going to be like, ‘what kind of people are they? What is their music about’? I get such a kick out of that. I mean, the cover of our record [The Prophecy of Smarmulous Rex] is a big psychedelic squid spewing slime and there’s four dudes ...you know what I mean? It looks like he’s spewing slime. It’s kind of ambiguous if it’s a mountain or it’s slime. It’s just so fun. This is like under everyone’s nose now. And they look at it and they’re like, ‘what the hell’?
Jamie: I think a lot of decisions I make, definitely artistically, are fuelled by what makes me feel really wacky. It’s totally self-indulgent. Especially the pimple flyer is a great example of that. I was dying, I was freaking out, I was getting such a kick out of myself making this flyer…
Bo: It’s just so cool to think that you’re going to make this ridiculous thing and people are going to have to see it.
Jamie: We could put out a record that looks so ridiculous and we know it’s going to be on the shelves at Newbury Comics and people are gonna see it and buy it.
Bo: People have bought that record. I’m sure no one knows what the hell the title’s about. It’s called “The Prophecy of Smarmulous Rex”.
melophobe: Yeah, what’s the deal with that?
Bo: Smarmulous Rex is a fictitious character that me and Jamie created. Basically he’s kind of like the anti-christ of grimy, glamrock sexuality - kind of in a mystical way.
Jamie: You’ve referred to him before as the naughty messiah
(laughs)
Bo: Yeah, think about him as the naughty messiah.
melophobe: So, is he going to appear throughout your career?
Bo: Yes - sort of a spiritual mentor.
Jamie: We’re just trying to channel Smarmulous Rex, really.
Bo: Smarmulous and Rex are like the yin and yang - everything you need to make it in rock-n-roll. Smarmulence and Reximous. Just kind of abstract ideas. Those are just like words we use to explain things that we’re thinking about. We can’t really tell you what they mean.
melophobe: Do you have a title for what you’re putting out next?
Bo: No.
Jamie:I told them a rock-n-roll idea.
Bo: I thought it would be cool to call it ‘Songs about Food’. Well, it’s only two songs.... and the title.
Jamie: There’s this one idea that I’ve had, which I’ve really wanted to do, which I think is so silly - To put out like a self-titled album that has a picture of J-Raff holding a rock and a dinner roll and there won’t be any words on it. Just a rock and a roll. It seems so silly and corny, but I don’t think anybody’s done that yet.
Bo: Yeah, it seems so obvious, but I don’t know.
Jamie: It’d make a good flier.
Bo: Or a t-shirt maybe.
Jamie: The thing about putting out records too is that it’s - which can be very exciting - it’s also very daunting. Once you seal the deal, it’s permanent. That’s part of that…something that’s historical. That’s part of your career, it’s part of everything. So as far as sneaking in little messages that people aren’t going to get for maybe twenty years, that’s fine. That’s all the better.
Bo: We have stuff like that on this one [points to the Smarmulous Rex album]. There’s some sneaky stuff.
Jamie: Oh, the secret track?
Bo: No one even knows about it.
Jamie: No one ever talks to us about it.
melophobe: The next interview will only be about the secret track.
Jamie: The secret track is probably the best song on the record.
Bo: Yeah, you know what’s funny speaking about rolls and shit…The other day, a week ago, I was outside, right here, coming down Rugg Road, and I saw this dude wearing a beret and he had a beard and he looked like a French guy. He was kicking a big piece of French bread down the street. It was hilarious. I wish I’d had a camera.
melophobe: Just wandering aimlessly? Was he talking to himself?
Bo: He looked pretty pissed. Yeah, I don’t know. He had a beret on. He was kicking the French bread. It was so cool.
melophobe: Was he well dressed otherwise?
Bo: No he was kind of a bum. That was so cool.
melophobe: Can you buy some good French bread around here?
Bo: Yeah, I think there’s a Russian market right at the top of the street, they might have it. It’s a Russian supermarket. They have weird fish.
Jamie: I like this whole area around the building too, because it’s all industrial and overgrown and decaying and a lot of rusty barbed wire with vines and trees and.... We’re going to start shooting videos for the new record that we’re putting out. Our friend, Matt Hoffman is a 16 mm and 8 mm cinematographer and he makes a lot of really amazing short films. He wants to do videos for us and for his own portfolio.
Bo: He’s actually in New York right now, but when he gets back at the end of the month we’re going to shoot some stuff. Just kind of hang out and shoot. In the refrigerator we have a box of about 9 or 10 rolls of 16 mm film.
Jamie: He’s great at editing and syncing up with time. He does really good, explosive stuff. To sync up with crashes and all that.
melophobe: Are you planning on having a lot of chase scenes?
Jamie: The thing is…we shot one roll and it was very impromptu in our regular clothes and hanging out and playing. But I have to think about a lot of stuff that I want to do, like with art - one thing, I’m going to make a J-Raff muppet. J-Raff just because of his hair. It’s really long. We have a J-Raff wig. Actually it looks a lot more like your hair now [to J-Raff].
Jamie [to Josh]: Put on the J-Raff wig.
melophobe (Josh): Okay, someone’s going to have to take a photo of me wearing the J-Raff wig. I can’t let this moment go.
[photos are taken]
Jamie: Yeah. I always figured if things don’t work out with the band, I’m going to be a before model.
melophobe: A before model?
Jamie: A before model, yeah. Get real fat, be a before model for like diet ads and fitness clubs, you know? Anyway, that very soon will be attached to my J-Raff muppet.
Bo: There’s a video that’s almost done for this first song, Vermilion [points to the Smarmulous album]. Our friend Lou goes to school in Connecticut. He’s a film major. For his senior project he’s doing a video for the song Vermilion.
Jamie: I play a vampire in it.
Bo: Jamie plays a vampire in it. It’s pretty dark and psychedelic. It’s pretty cool. It should be done pretty soon.
melophobe: So it’s already been shot?
Bo: Yeah, we did it. We did filming in the admissions building in the school which is like a big castle.
melophobe: And they had no problem with that?
Jamie: No, it was all night time shots. I was this very creepy Michael Jacksonesque vampire.
melophobe: Just Michael Jacksonesque is sort of creepy enough.
Jamie: Right – pretty smarmulous. Michael Jackson is like our modern day equivalent of Voldemort.
Bo: You know who Voldemort is, of course?
melophobe: Oh, yeah. I waited in line for the last book.
Group: Really?
melophobe: Yeah.
Bo: We all got it on the first day and read it right away.
Jamie: I remember I had somewhere to go when that book came out. I was going to leave in like 10 minutes and the book had just gotten there. I thought I’d just look at like the first page and I didn’t go anywhere for hours. That was my first mistake. I think I stayed up all night. That was a good one.
melophobe: Were you happy with how it turned out?
Jamie: I liked it.
Bo: Too many narrow escapes in that book, though.
melophobe: That’s what Harry is good at, though, I mean, he’s all about the narrow escapes, right from the beginning.
Jamie: That’s true. That’ll be neat. Not about Harry Potter, but I guess back to making videos. That’s one thing…digital media is just so crucial these days. Like the internet and having videos. That’s why I feel really strongly about…especially with our website being on medium format, regular film.
Bo: Then when it’s digitized it looks better.
Jamie: I like using analogue material as much as I can for a digital medium. That’s why recording music to 1 inch tape, that’s going to be heard through MySpace anyway. It’s just giving it a little bit less of that sharp sort of...that’s a digital camera isn’t it? Those look so nice though. I didn’t mean to rag on your digital camera, those look so nice.
melophobe: No, medium format is like another level, though. This stuff does the job, but I’m a little too lazy for medium format.
Bo: It’s expensive too, developing.
melophobe: Yeah, and film’s hard to buy now, too. Everything’s going digital. So filmmakers are going out of business. Paper makers are going out of business.
Jamie: We were talking to our neighbor about getting van. We don’t have a van yet. We never have. But we’re saving.
melophobe: Where have you guys gone besides Boston?
Bo: Not too far. We’ve been to New York, Brooklyn a bunch. Really Philadelphia is the farthest away. Connecticut and places like that. I guess the farthest right now is Philadelphia.
melophobe: Where did you play in Philadelphia?
Bo: The Khyber.
Jamie: We played in Manhattan a week or two ago. That was a blast.
Bo: We played at the Annex. It was really cool.
melophobe: Do you just play with different people every night?
Bo: Yeah, around Boston, there’s some bands that we’ve consistently played a lot with, like Viva Viva and Drug Rug. We’ve played with a bunch. Yeah, here in Boston we’ve also played with some pretty big bands. We’ve opened for The Stills and the French Kicks.
Jamie: The Stills are nice. The French Kicks are assholes.
melophobe: Really?
Bo: The French Kicks are fucking...no, just the singer’s a fucking loser. We had a party after the French Kicks show and they acted like they were too cool to come over. Then they came anyway…and it was like…the singer pissed in our sink over there. I was like, ‘yo, did you just piss in the sink?’ And he was like ‘would I do that?’ I was like ‘fuck you.’ I don’t care if he reads this, man. He was an asshole. You can write that the French Kicks singer is an asshole. I remember, you asked him…
Jamie: I was like, ‘hey man, did you catch our set?’ and he was like ‘oh, I was having a conversation the whole time’. Whatever man, you’re not like ‘the man’, you know? He was like 7 feet tall and he had this weird fake tan, like this little neck scarf. I remember the whole set sounding like one long dreary disco song. Then they did their little encore and it was – they either played “She Said, She Said” or “And Your Bird Can Sing.” It was killer. I was trying to compliment them on that being really awesome, but it came out as me saying I wish they’d just played Beatles songs. Which is fine, because they just ended up being dicks.
Bo: No, just the singer, man. The rest of them were nice.
Jamie: I guess they were nice, but that kind of ...
melophobe: Maybe that’s why he pissed in your sink.
Jamie: Maybe that’s why.
Bo: Yeah, we played with Paul Sunshine and the Self-Righteous Brothers a while ago. That was really cool.
Jamie: They’re awesome.
melophobe: Do you like Boston as a place to be?
Bo: It’s alright. I’m not really that impressed by the music scene around here, but like I think there’s a handful of good bands. But other than that, you know what I mean? It’s alright. Hopefully we’re going to not spend too much time here in the future. Basically the goal is to get the hell out.
Jamie: It’s easy to get trapped in Boston. I think that’s because it’s comfortable.
Bo: It’s comfortable and there’s not a very high standard for musicians around here. It’s very easy to be a very mediocre band and become legends in Boston.
melophobe: Why is that?
Bo: I think there’s just a lower standard for bands or something. All the bands that are supposedly legends around here, I think, well, they’re not my thing, I’m not into it. I mean, you know what I mean? They’re Boston bands. I’m not.
melophobe: So who are those people?
Bo: It’s kind of like dumb girl hard rockers. I don’t know, I think there’s some really good bands from around here.
Jamie: Well, they’re all okay, but think about the Pixies, they’re amazing.
Bo: The Pixies rock. The Cars were cool. The band Boston.
melophobe: Morphine.
Jamie: Morphine’s awesome.
Bo: Right now, I think there’s like…Drug Rug’s awesome. Apollo’s been out for a while. They’re awesome. Viva Viva is great, we played with them a lot.
Jamie: They’re my favorite.
Bo: Self-Righteous Brothers are cool.
Jamie: Tulsa’s amazing.
Bo: Tulsa, yeah. Carter is the man. Tulsa’s awesome. I mean, you know…
Jamie: There’s this whole scene of basically with all the…
Bo: But see, that’s right. That’s the other thing. All those bands are part of a group together. I don’t know if we’re really in it with them, but we want to be.
Jamie: Well, we hang out with a lot of those guys, anyway.
Bo: They’re all older than us. So we like try to be cool.
Jamie: I remember, the first one we met was Dave from Viva Viva a year ago or a few years ago and then...basically Carter records all these bands and this is all Carter’s stuff [gestures around the room]. Now this is Carter’s studio.
Bo: We hang out with those dudes and we’ve played with them and shit and it’s wicked cool, you know?
Jamie: That whole community is great, like Tommy from Drug Rug ... we played at the Middle East the other night and him and his brother Johnny - they both were in Viva Viva for a while - and then Johnny was in Drug Rug and now he plays with Headband and whoever else - and they were both working as the bar and bar-back at our show. We just hung out with them the whole night. Tommy was saying, if you ever want me to fill in as a fourth person, playing with you...that’s sort of that whole community, the bands playing with each other and recording on each other’s albums. It’s friendship and that’s awesome. We play shows together all the time. I’d love to be on a label with some of these bands and tour with them.
Bo: But, ideally, the goal is to not be around Boston too much. We’ve only got one more show booked in Boston right now and it’s April 9th at T.T. the Bears. We’re playing with a band from the U.K. called The Duke Spirit. That’s the last thing we’re going to do in Boston for a while. I think because we’ve played a lot of shows the last couple of months - and it’s awesome, it really is. I think our name has gotten out a little more - but I don’t want to be a Boston band. I don’t want…
Jamie: Well that’s part of the problem, it’s comfortable, and you get into that thing where…
Bo: No one cares if you’re popular in Boston. A band that blows up in New York, everyone cares, it’s like ‘holy shit they just conquered New York, we should pay attention’. But no one fucking cares if you win the BCN Rumble. No one fucking cares.
melophobe: Do you want to relocate somewhere, or just play elsewhere?
Bo: No man, we’re not going to get a place like this anywhere else [gestures around the room]. We’re all from here. We all grew up together.
Jamie: It’s definitely going to take us a few years to exhaust all of our resources in Boston and then it’s going to be at the point where...Boston is a great home base as long as you’re touring. That’s the other thing.
melophobe: As long as you’re not here much.
Bo: I just don’t want to get stuck here. It happens. It really does happen. Bands like - I’m sure bands say this in every city - but you just gotta get the hell out. Right now there’s that band whose CD is out, they’re pretty nice, they’re a punk band from around here. Some cool kids. They’re really good at not being a Boston band. They’ve toured a bunch. They just got themselves signed to Hardly Art, which is a subsidiary of Sub Pop. They’re at South by Southwest right now. They’re really good at not being a Boston band.
melophobe: What’s holding you guys back so far?
Bo: We don’t have a van, we keep losing members of our band.
Jamie: Part of it is it took us a long time…we’ve gone through a lot of adaptation and growth and just trying to figure it out. It started like…Me and J-Raff started a band when we were 14 or 15 along with my friend Kyle.
Bo: And I had a separate band for a while. Then we merged. At this point two, two and a half years ago we merged to become this band.
Jamie: I think one of the first things too is having separate members in the band who were more controlling and me giving up more of my artistic ideals and us trying to play the game of ‘what’s a band supposed to do, how’s a band supposed to be?’, instead of just freaking out and having fun and being silly and doing things in a more off-the-cuff way. We’ve talked about how much fun it would be to be in the Flaming Lips - a band that doesn’t give the fuck and does everything their own way. That’s really the ideal. I was saying I’m tired of feeling like we’re in a boy band. I want to be on stage in red rubber underpants and no shirt, spitting blood to the audience and throwing feathers and silly shit like that.
Bo: Basically, the thing is, the reason why we’re still here is because we’ve fucking wasted a lot of time. We haven’t always been very efficient. That’s partially due to the fact that we’ve compromised with certain people who’ve been in the band that’s led to time being wasted, because we didn’t have the right formula down yet. We’ve kind of fucked around a lot.
Jamie: I’d say that as an artist you can’t do anything that’s going to compromise your own artistic integrity because if you do, you’re not going to be 100% behind your product and what it is that you’re doing and that’s going to make you less motivated. It’s as simple as that.
Bo: We’ve been making progress in a good way. At this point we’ve recorded 5 songs so far of what will become an album. This summer I’d like to tour twice if we can. Just get the hell out of here and make a name out there in the rest of the country.
Jamie: Ideally, we’ll get some label to put out the record and then maybe get a spot opening, supporting some bigger band so that we’ll have good shows lined up with people coming to them.
haha is that a compliment?
by colin on Sat Mar 13, 2010 at 06.49 pm from the entry: Interview - Kelli Schaefer (Portland, OR; Winter, 2010)
love that melophobe has more “couples” reviewers, and more “Ian/Ion/Ian/Iain” than the average site…
by Ian on Sat Mar 13, 2010 at 06.48 pm from the entry: sevendust + drowning pool + digital summer + the flood - showbox market (seattle, WA; Mar 07, 2010
you’re positively glowing in this interview, Colin
by Ian on Sat Mar 13, 2010 at 06.46 pm from the entry: Interview - Kelli Schaefer (Portland, OR; Winter, 2010)
Hey Merseilles did a live web show at sonicbirds office gig on Friday that was pretty spectacular. Can anyone find a copy of that?
by Smallweed on Sat Mar 13, 2010 at 11.40 am from the entry: SXSW Send Off Show - Visqueen + Hey Marseilles - Neumos (Seattle, WA; Mar. 5, 2010)
I was thinking of looking up some of them newspaper websites, but am glad I came here instead. Although glad is not quite the right word…
montreal asian escorts
by Abbott on Sat Mar 13, 2010 at 06.00 am from the entry: Social Distortion - Showbox Sodo (Seattle, WA; July 17, 2009)
16 is great! jealous there was a fence at the market....
by nicole on Fri Mar 12, 2010 at 06.53 pm from the entry: sevendust + drowning pool + digital summer + the flood - showbox market (seattle, WA; Mar 07, 2010
Kelli Shaefer’s songs get stuck in my head non-stop. Every other day I find myself waking up with one in there. And that’s a good thing, she’s a talent!
by Siri on Thu Mar 11, 2010 at 04.37 pm from the entry: Artist Profile - Kelli Schaefer (Portland, OR; Winter, 2010)
